


reading the room

by facingthenorthwind (spacegandalf), poppunkpadfoot



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Community: HPFT, First Kiss, M/M, Marauders Era (Harry Potter), Room of Requirement Shenanigans, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-14
Updated: 2020-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:08:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23137453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacegandalf/pseuds/facingthenorthwind, https://archiveofourown.org/users/poppunkpadfoot/pseuds/poppunkpadfoot
Summary: Sometimes you get locked out of Gryffindor Tower and decide the best course of action is to sleep in the Room of Requirement. Sometimes you do that with one of your best friends, who also happens to be the object of your massive crush.And sometimes, the Room of Requirement only gives you one bed.
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 18
Kudos: 343





	reading the room

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Lex's Only One Bed challenge on HPFT! Thank you to Melanie for the beta. <3

So… Remus and Sirius really had not meant to stay out so late. They really, really hadn’t.

It was just that they’d gotten distracted; they were only supposed to be scouting out the hidden passageways in the basement so that they could get in some good progress on that portion of the Map tomorrow. James had an early-morning Quidditch practice tomorrow, and Peter was dreadfully behind on his Transfiguration homework, and so it was Up To Them. And they _had_ done what was asked of them — they had some very thorough notes and sketches of the tunnel-system they’d found last year behind a tapestry of a banquet featuring the gruesome sight of a whole roasted goblin. It was just that they had gotten quite distracted by the kitchens shortly thereafter.

Pleasantly full of chocolate cake (Remus had a smudge of chocolate icing on the side of his mouth, but Sirius was absolutely not going to tell him, because that would definitely betray the fact that he had been looking), they made their way back to Gryffindor Tower in a leisurely fashion — with both the cloak and the (admittedly incomplete) Map, they were in no danger from Filch or anyone else.

The problem was that when they arrived, the Fat Lady was nowhere to be seen. They had heard her mention friends before, and once they had seen her red-faced and giggly in a painting on the Fourth Floor of a monk-run brewery, but she’d never been missing when they needed to get in before.

After five minutes of waiting, she hadn’t returned. If it were May, it would at least be warm, but somehow Sirius was managing to be too cold _and_ uncomfortably hot where he and Remus were pressed together, under this cloak ostensibly made for one (very large?) person. To be clear, if it had been James, rather than Remus, that Sirius was under this cloak with, he would be having far less of a problem with the close contact, and probably would not be feeling uncomfortably hot.

Fuck his life, to be honest.

Kipping in one of the empty classrooms sounded even more uncomfortable than just waiting in front of the portrait in case the Fat Lady returned, but Remus had begun to yawn, so they needed to figure something out. Sleeping places that weren’t beds were clearly hard on Remus — he tried not to complain about it but they had all noticed how stiff he was if they fell asleep on the floor (or, on one disastrous OWL revision session, at their desks). There were surprisingly few places in the castle that were acceptable for napping outside the common rooms, though — except for maybe the library, but that was usually more heavily patrolled than other areas (due to the risk of Ravenclaws sneaking in for extra-curricular studying, Sirius could only presume), so that was out.

Sirius was mulling it over when Remus suddenly spoke, making him jump a little. “What about the Room?”

Sirius looked down at the Map, even though the Room wasn’t on it. (They had tried — they knew where it was, after all — but it never took. Their current theory was that it was Unplottable, but they couldn’t really be certain.) There was no one on the Seventh Floor — Filch and Mrs Norris were in the Trophy Room — and they had a clear path all the way.

“You’re a genius, Moony,” he said, a little more breathlessly than he would like. “That makes perfect sense. The path is clear, look.”

Remus leant in a little over his shoulder, and his breath was tickling Sirius’s ear. “Professor Sinistra is worth looking out for — she’s not in our way yet, but if she decides to leave the Astronomy Tower, she might be. But we can just keep an eye out, obviously.” 

Sirius’s face flushed a little at the oversight, and he nodded. “Good point. So, uh, shall we?”

It was quite awkward, moving together under the cloak while holding the map open; Sirius was quite sure their ankles must be visible, but there was no one around anyway, so it didn’t really matter for the moment. They had to duck into an alcove for a moment at one point, when the Grey Lady floated past, but they weren’t spotted and Remus had only yawned twice more in the time it took for them to get to the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy.

“If we both do the asking, it might get confused — do you want to do it?” Remus said after a moment of them both staring at the blank stretch of wall.

“Sure,” Sirius said, suddenly unreasonably nervous. He wasn’t usually like this! He thought he had been doing very well at not panicking about his ridiculous crush, considering he was in Remus’s presence ninety percent of the time. But here he was, goosebumps rising on his arms every time Remus so much as brushed against him under the cloak, fully in charge of creating a bedroom that _won’t_ give anything away.

Great.

A fireplace, he thought. A room with a fireplace and fluffy pillows and soft duvets and perhaps even snacks. (He knew that last bit wouldn’t work, but he always asked the Room for snacks just in case.) A firm mattress as a finishing touch, of course, because those were easiest on Remus’s joints, and with that they would be all set to (finally) get a good night’s sleep.

When the door appeared, Sirius opened it and was halfway inside before he realised the fatal flaw in his planning.

There was only one bed. Sure, everything else he had asked for was there — a fire crackling in the grate, a lot of pillows, a traditional red and gold colour scheme. But only one bed.

He stopped short and Remus bumped into him. “Ah,” Remus said as he peered around Sirius to get a look. Sirius couldn’t tell what the ‘ah’ meant. Was that an ‘ah, my best friend has a very big gay crush on me, this is unfortunate’ or was it an ‘ah, silly Sirius, forgot to make two beds’ or… or a worse ‘ah’? 

“Haha,” Sirius said, and it didn’t even sound like a laugh. “Clearly I’m uh, out of practice at creating Rooms. You know how it is, you have to specify every little thing or it takes liberties. Why don’t you have a go instead?”

He closed the door and they were back in the corridor, still standing distressingly close together under this godforsaken cloak. He was absolutely not looking at Remus’s face, too embarrassed by how much the Room had spilled all his secrets. Well, one secret.

“Sure,” Remus said, sounding awkward. “I can give it a go.”

* * *

Remus’s night was already not going according to plan, but this — this was just ridiculous.

He’d already been forced to spend a frankly unreasonable amount of time pressed right up against Sirius under the Cloak, which was something that he could generally tolerate when they were up to some really good mischief — but right then they weren’t up to mischief (well… not really), and he was sleepy, and his traitorous brain kept conjuring up entirely unhelpful thoughts about how warm Sirius was and how good he smelled, and it was just… well, a bit torturous, really.

And now they had _finally_ reached the Room of Requirement, and Remus had followed Sirius in, and there was _only one bed_.

“Ah,” Remus said, because any ability to form actual words had eluded him. What on earth did this _mean_? The most obvious answer was that Sirius was just as sleepy as he was and forgot to specify two beds. The mortification on his face when Remus finally got a look at it supported this theory, so he quashed down the annoying little bubble of hope that had popped up in his chest and tried to school his face into something approaching blankness. He wasn’t sure he succeeded.

“Haha,” Sirius said, in a terrible approximation of a laugh, sounding just as mortified as he looked. Then he suggested that Remus create the room instead, and Remus forced himself to stop wondering why Sirius wasn’t looking at him so he could concentrate on making the most comfortable yet Extremely Heterosexual room he could possibly fathom. Two beds. Mostly, he was thinking about the two beds. (Also, the mattress. _Mattresses_. Fuck, he was going to confuse the Room and give himself away.)

Fireplace, firm mattresses, pillows, a little bathroom so they didn’t have to trek all the way to the bathroom at the other end of the corridor in the morning. _Two beds_. Easy enough.

The door appeared again. He opened it.

There was only one bed.

“Fuck,” he said very softly, and then followed with, “I swear I specified — I don’t… there is no reason the Room is not capable of giving us two beds. I just want to go to _sleep_ , please.” At this, he looked up and spoke to the ceiling, which is where he imagined the sentience of the Room was. The Room, however, did not yield.

“Let me try one more time,” Sirius suggested. “I… I think I might’ve forgotten to specify — I mean, I’m tired and all — and maybe I… confused it? It’s worth a shot, right?”

Remus acquiesced, and they exited the room again, the door vanishing behind them. He watched as Sirius stared at the wall, apparently thinking very hard. At first he looked exactly the way he always did when focused on a difficult problem in class — sharp, determined, _very_ handsome (okay, no, that was so unhelpful) — but then his eyes went a little unfocused, and a contented sort of look came over his face, and Remus worried for a moment that he was under some sort of charm or jinx before he abruptly shook it off.

The door appeared again, and they both looked at the knob apprehensively for a long moment, until they suddenly heard Filch talking to Mrs Norris just around the corner. It was Sirius who moved first, bolting forward and practically throwing the door open, and the two of them scrambled inside and slammed the door shut behind them. For a moment, Remus was afraid that Filch would try to open the door and catch them, but he kept talking to Mrs Norris, showing no indication he had noticed the extra door.

It was only after a few seconds that Remus actually took in the sight before him.

It looked like what would happen if Madam Puddifoot’s became a bedroom. Just as in the two rooms before it, there was a fireplace crackling away in the corner; but somehow this one was even _more_ charming than the last. It almost seemed extra… crackly, or something. Yes. Extra crackly. Or maybe his view of the fireplace was being coloured by the candles flickering gently on every surface, and the fucking _rose petals_ scattered over the floor — and the _bed_. The one, singular bed.

Oh _god_.

It was… like _nothing_ Remus had ever seen before. It was piled high with throws and blankets and pillows in soft, pastel tones; hanging over the bed and falling gently down the sides was a thin, lacy canopy that seemed to flutter gently in a non-existent breeze. Worst of all, propped up against the ornate white headboard was a big pink pillow in the shape of a heart.

“What the _hell_ ,” Sirius choked out beside him.

“I take it you did not mean for this to happen,” Remus said, sounding remarkably calm to his own ears.

“Absolutely not. I was trying to make our dorm, except with more pillows. Fuck, I — I guess once we’re sure Filch is gone we can go out and try again? One of these times it has to actually give us what we want.”

“I mean — d’you think?” Remus chewed his lip, taking in the scene before him; more and more details assailed his senses every time he looked around. “The Room seems to have some sort of bee in its bonnet tonight.”

“Or we can just sleep on the floor in a classroom somewhere! Who needs beds! It’s fine!” Sirius said, his voice becoming increasingly high-pitched and panicky.

“You’re not going to catch anything,” Remus said, and he was horrified to find that the offence he felt had crept into his voice. Sure, he wasn’t _thrilled_ at the prospect of having to share this insane bed with his best friend who he’d been hopelessly crushing on for months, but as far as he knew, _Sirius_ had no reason to object. “You can sleep in a classroom all you like, but it’ll be far comfier if we just share the bed.”

“I didn’t mean—” Sirius said, his face somehow going even redder. “As long as you’re alright with it, I suppose.”

“Of course I am,” Remus said, trying to look the part. Fake it ‘til you make it, wasn’t that what people said? “Come on, Iet’s just — the sooner we’re asleep, the sooner we can stop worrying about the bed.”

* * *

The Room of Requirement hated him. That was the only explanation. Sirius tried desperately to think of how he had wronged a magical room, but came up with nothing — they’d used it plenty since they discovered it, but it wasn’t like they had ever mistreated it. Maybe it was just that the whole entire universe was out to get him. That seemed almost more likely. If he’d thought the first, single-bed room was bad, it was _nothing_ compared to this… this total _betrayal_.

He’d gotten distracted for _one second_ out in the hallway. Just for one second, he had imagined sharing a bed with Remus — but only in a universe where that would actually be okay! Not in _this_ universe. In this universe he needed two beds, and he had been very explicit about that! But no, the Room had taken that split second of distraction and had decided to screw him over with it.

The first thing he did was brush some of the rose petals off the duvet, noting that they were still silky smooth — how had the Room even got hold of fresh rose petals? Could it create living things? If people thought of rosewater as a food, would this be breaking Gamp’s Law? 

No, it was far too late to be thinking about this. And it wasn’t helping his mood at all.

The second thing he did was… well, resist the urge to throw the stupid heart pillow into the fucking fireplace. Merlin, he had been working _so hard_ to keep this all under wraps, but… here it was. In bedroom form.

“Ooh, a bedside table! The Room has probably put a bible in there,” Remus said, chuckling. This was clearly supposed to be funny but Sirius didn’t understand — why would there be a bible in there? Did muggles keep bibles inside drawers? What was wrong with bookshelves?

When Remus opened the drawer, he went bright red and shut it with a loud bang. 

“What is it? A Monster Book of Bibles?” Sirius asked, almost alarmed.

“Erm… not exactly,” Remus replied, but refused to elaborate. “I don’t suppose the Room’s got some pyjamas for us…?”

Sirius looked around, hoping very hard that the Room would create a chest of drawers, or even just some pyjamas on the end of the bed. It did not, because as he had already established, the Room held a grudge against him specifically. Probably. Either way, it was determined to make his life as hellish as possible.

“Underwear it is, then,” Remus said, sounding very resigned, and started to undo his robes.

Sirius looked away hurriedly, getting out of his robes and under the duvet with his eyes firmly closed. Moments later, he felt the other side of the mattress dip down as Remus joined him in the bed. “G’night,” he mumbled, making sure he was as close to the edge of the bed as he could be without fear of falling off in the night.

At least the bed was very comfortable. That was about the least the Room could do, in this situation.

Sirius wished that he could just fall asleep. He’d been tired, before this — not as much as Remus clearly was, but even the great Sirius Black had to sleep sometimes. Now that he was finally in bed, he seemed to be wide awake and hyper-aware that Remus Lupin was mostly naked with (at most) only two feet between them. It was the world’s most nightmarish wet dream.

As he lay there contemplating what terrible sins he’d committed in a past life to deserve this, the duvet slowly began inching away from him. Soon, his right leg was uncovered. The fire did quite a bit to stave off the cold but not enough, and when he tried to retrieve some duvet Remus held onto it with an iron grip. He considered saying something, but… Remus was so tired, and he didn’t want to wake him. After a long moment of hesitation, he shuffled over a few inches so he was back under the duvet — only to have it once more tugged just far enough that he was exposed to the air again.

Irritably, he shuffled over again. This repeated several times until there were only a few inches between them — he imagined he could almost feel Remus’s body heat radiating off his skin. There was no way forward.

He gave the duvet a strong tug, and to his surprise Remus rolled over, wide awake and startled.

“What — you’re awake?” he whispered, blinking.

“ _You’re_ awake?” Sirius countered, very intelligently. “Why are — you’re hogging the duvet.”

He was surprised he’d managed to get so many words out — and somewhat coherently, too — given that Remus’s face was suddenly so very close to his own, and they were looking right into each other’s eyes in the semi-darkness. It was almost as if they were having a Moment, except that they definitely were not having a Moment, because for all that Sirius was Extremely, Painfully, Tragically Gay, Remus Lupin was… Definitely Heterosexual? Some traitorous voice in the back of Sirius’s head asked when he had ever actually dated a girl, been caught kissing a girl, mentioned kissing a girl or shown any interest in doing any of the former things — and Sirius had to admit he had no answer. However, he was quite sure that he just wasn’t remembering the many instances where those things must have happened, because… well, Sirius just wasn’t lucky enough that there was _any chance_ the love of his life could actually be gay, let alone fancy him back.

That was… a depressing train of thought, so he tried to re-focus. Except that his gaze wouldn’t stop drifting down to Remus’s mouth, no matter how hard he tried to stop looking. Which was what led him to notice that the chocolate icing from earlier was still there. He only half-heard the apology that Remus made for the duvet-hogging, mostly because his own heartbeat was pounding in his ears.

“You’ve got—” (Did he actually sound that breathless, or was he imagining things? Hopefully he was imagining things, good god.) “—some icing? Just there.” He managed to restrain himself from reaching forward and wiping it away himself, instead pointing to the left of Remus’s mouth.

Remus scrubbed at his face with the heel of his hand but managed, miraculously, to miss most of the icing.

“No, it’s—” Sirius said, finally just reaching forward and wiping it away with his thumb. He almost went to lick the icing off his thumb, but thankfully remembered that it had been on someone _else’s_ face, so was not appropriate. He wiped it on his boxers instead.

“Has that been there this whole time?” Remus asked, his cheeks red. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I, er — just noticed,” Sirius lied, because he could not say ‘I didn’t want you to realize that I’ve been staring at your mouth’.

Remus gave him a look he was all too familiar with, though it usually wasn’t directed at him. It was his ‘No, Peter, tell me what _really_ happened to my second-best quill’ look, and despite the fact that this had all started because Sirius had been chilly without the duvet, he began to feel hot under the scrutiny.

“You’re a shitty liar,” he said mildly, and Sirius tried to laugh, but it came out forced. His mind was completely blank, and when he tried to think of some good excuse all he got were the words to the third verse of The Banshees’ 1973 chart-topping hit, ‘Floating On A Cloud (From A Billywig Sting)’.

_These billywigs ain’t got nothing on how you make me feel…_

No! No, he had to come up with a good and heterosexual explanation for this. _’Cause when I see you, I’m sure I can fly…_ There had to be something! ‘I thought it was a birthmark’? No, that was ridiculous. _I’m floooating on a clooouudddd…._

“Are you… alright?” Remus asked.

There were billywigs in Sirius’s stomach and they were furious.

“Yeah, of — of course,” Sirius said, but he could hear that he sounded about as convincing as Peter claiming Remus’s second-best quill had been stolen by doxies. For a moment he considered finding an excuse to get out of this stupid bed and leave the room, but he knew he couldn’t come up with anything believable.

Remus pressed his lips together into a thin line, at the same time raising one eyebrow, and Sirius could physically feel his resolve weakening with every passing moment. He was going to blurt everything out and ruin his own life, all because he couldn’t get a stupid _room_ to cooperate with him.

Everything was awful.

* * *

Everything was _awful_.

First of all they got shut out of the tower, then this stupid room only gave them one bed (and no pyjamas, because of course), then Remus made a fool of himself by hogging the duvet accidentally — and now! Sirius was informing him that he had walked around with chocolate icing on his face for who knew how long. 

And now Sirius was looking like he had several things to be ashamed of, and Remus didn’t even know _why_. He was just about to dismiss it (and probably stew about it forever, turning it over and over in his mind until it made sense) when Sirius spoke.

“It was just — you — your face is very distracting, okay, but I didn’t want you to — to be uncomfortable, or anything.”

Remus had his mouth open to say something about how it couldn’t possibly be distracting, Sirius saw his face every day — but Sirius looked so abjectly miserable that he couldn’t do it.

“Can we just go to sleep, please?” Sirius mumbled, refusing to meet Remus’s eyes, and now Remus could distinctly hear that particular tone creeping into his voice — that tone that meant ‘Sirius is going to shut his canopy and have a breakdown’ — and maybe that meant Remus should leave it alone and… well, pretend to go to sleep, but he was just so confused? There was no reason for Sirius to be panicking, and there was no canopy for him to hide behind this time, and Remus definitely didn’t want to fall asleep and just leave Sirius to suffer.

“Hey,” he said softly, bringing his hand up to cup Sirius’s cheek. “Look at me?”

For a moment, Remus thought he wouldn’t do it. He was trying not to feel hurt about it when Sirius finally did, looking up with the air of a man facing his execution. Was Remus imagining things, or did his eyes look a little shinier than usual? He almost seemed to be holding his breath. For a long moment, they just stared at each other in silence, Remus absentmindedly stroking his thumb over Sirius’s cheekbone. (He had very soft skin, but Remus was trying not to notice.) He seemed to have calmed down; or, at least, he didn’t seem on the verge of panic anymore. Had he… had he shifted a little closer without meaning to?

Remus and Sirius had been in the same bed before. There was the annual tradition of seeing just how much weight they could put on the beds in the dorm before something creaked ominously, which did involve a lot of squishing up into a small space together (for maximum stress, obviously — they didn’t want to do something sensible like distribute their weight evenly). There was even a very memorable evening when for reasons best left to another time, they had been trapped for a night in a secret passageway which was so cramped as to force them to sleep like sardines, though none of them got a good night’s rest. None of those times felt like _this_.

Maybe it was the soft, warm light from the fire and all the candles, or maybe it was how supremely comfortable the bed was. Maybe — and Remus thought this the most likely contributor — it was the fact that they were alone and no one could interrupt them or ruin the moment with a particularly heinous fart or a, “Do you think flobberworms dream?”

Or maybe Remus was just hallucinating out of tiredness. Whatever the reason, as Sirius’s eyes flickered down a little when Remus swallowed, Remus was struck by a sudden bout of courage. Godric Gryffindor, wingmanning from beyond the grave. He leant forward just a little, murmured, “Stop me if—” and then kissed Sirius.

It was barely a kiss, to be fair. A brush of lips. He didn’t dare do anything else, but as he began to pull away, Sirius reached up to grab his arm, at the same time pressing forward and — and kissing him back.

* * *

Sirius was a little bit convinced that he had in fact fallen asleep, and this was all a dream, and when he woke up they would be two feet apart because they were Not Gay and he would continue pining after one of his best friends like some sadsack for the rest of his life.

On the other, he wasn’t sure that his brain could have produced the sheer amount of _sensations_ that made up Kissing Remus John Lupin. His lips were softer than Sirius had ever imagined, and his hand was still cupping Sirius’s cheek, and when he opened his mouth he tasted like the Honeydukes they’d split between them as they were walking back to Gryffindor Tower.

He had imagined this so many times ( _so_ many times) and yet somehow it was a million times better than anything he had ever imagined. That meant this was probably real, right?

Just to make sure, he reached down as subtly as possible and pinched his thigh. It hurt like a bitch, so that just about confirmed it.

Maybe the Room or Requirements didn’t hate his guts after all.

Apparently he hadn’t been subtle enough with his pinch though, because Remus pulled back just a little and chuckled breathlessly. “What are you — did you just pinch yourself?”

“I was just double-checking,” he mumbled sheepishly, moving his hand to rest on Remus’s waist instead.

“Dream about this a lot, then?” Remus teased.

“Uh — yes? Are you saying it’s only just occurred to you now, you were possessed by an entirely novel idea that you could try kissing me here when we’re mostly naked in the same bed, just to see what it was like?”

That seemed to catch Remus off-guard. “Well — no, of course not. I just — I never thought you would —”

“I never thought you would either,” Sirius said, and leant in to kiss Remus again — except that before he could, Remus yawned loudly. Sirius had no idea what time it was (James’s parents had been kind enough to give him the traditional gold watch for his birthday, but he couldn’t make out the hands in the dim firelight), but it was definitely gone midnight when they found The Fat Lady had buggered off, so it was probably an hour of the night humans were not supposed to see. So he laughed softly and gave Remus a quick peck on the lips. “We should go to sleep. For real this time.”

“Ugh.” Remus scrunched his nose up a little. “We should, shouldn’t we.”

“Very unfortunately, human beings do need sleep sometimes — or so I’m told.” He smirked and traced his hand up over Remus’s ribs. “But we could continue this in the morning?”

Remus laughed softly and kissed him again briefly. “Sounds good to me. Goodnight, Sirius.”

“Night,” he said, grinning to himself.

They fell asleep with their legs tangled together, the fire softly crackling in the grate.


End file.
